Love

The pursuit of fulfilment without harm is the love of life, wisdom and truth, and the love of all people, to and from whom there should be no harm.

Fulfilment is living. That is what life does, fulfil itself. This is it purpose, its prime directive. Sometimes this purpose is obscured by the complexity of our systems of government, economy, organisation and society. However, at their base, their key guiding principle should be to enable fulfilment for every person.

The purpose of fulfilment often gets obscured by the competing purposes of income, property, status, and power. These purposes override the primary purpose of fulfilment in systems that are not shaped to adequately protect and enable the fulfilment of everyone.

Wisdom is the knowledge and understanding of life gained through experience and learning. As the most intellectual of all animals, wisdom is a key element of human fulfillment. Humans have evolved into beings for which wisdom, learning and understanding are primary to living.

Truth is a requirement of wisdom, and is what is sought when wisdom is pursued. Incorrect understandings are not of greatest benefit, and the theories and ideas we produce to further our understanding are constantly under test by our observations from reality to ensure their accuracy and truth.

For the purpose of fulfillment to be realised for all it must be pursued without harm to others. So, at the very least, the requirement is not to harm or accept harm. And given we are all one human species, there is every benefit for ourselves as a species to love and assist one another in a manner that best suits our individual abilities, that is, in a manner that fulfils ourselves doing it.

Our own needs are our primary responsibility, we are responsible for ourselves, but in pursuing our fulfilment we can help others seek fulfilment in a virtuous cycle of increasing fulfilment, providing we act with love and without harm to others.

When we have a system that enables everyone to fulfil themselves, and realise their potential without harm, then we will have a world of 'peace and love'. This goal is realised by shaping the systems we have and influencing the people who live in them. It is not reached through catastrophic upheavals and religious interventions to 'purge the wicked'.

The pursuit of fulfilment without harm does have similarities to the Christian commandments to love God (which can be interpreted as love life as God is the creator, love wisdom as God is all knowledgeable, and love truth as God is the truth) and love your neighbour (so, at the very least, do them no harm). But fulfilment without harm does not require the carrot of the Promise that comes with Judgement Day (when all nations will war and Jesus will come to save the righteous who will live forever). This promise (and threat) is not needed or helpful in the secular pursuit of fulfilment without harm, for the benefits of creating a system where everyone can find fulfilment (regardless of religion) accrue to everyone and are being pursued now. It is a positive purpose and an empowering purpose.

Love was also around before Jesus and the Bible. Christianity, or other religions, do not own love, no matter how strongly they claim to. The Bible puts a commendable emphasis on the love of God and neighbour above all other things. An emphasis we should realise non-religiously in the love of life (of ourselves and all 'creation', realised by pursuing our fulfilment and our understanding of the universe) and love of others (not harming them or accepting harm from them, but assisting them in the ways we are best able). This maximises good relationships, peace on Earth, fulfilment for all, and love.

It should also be emphasised that making a book (any book, secular or religious), and the organisation that interprets it, more important than people, means those that do this can never truly love anyone. If a person can be excluded or shunned (sacrificed in any way) because they no longer profess commitment to the book (sometimes called the truth) and its organisation or belief system, then love for people is always contingent upon them putting the book and the organisation first. That is not true love. True love always puts people (and love) first. The principle of living without harm, of love for all, is greater than any book, organisation or belief system.


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Integrity

If we do not have integrity (open and honest truth) we do not have anything. Without integrity we cannot be true to living without harm, we cannot be true to our purpose or the principle we know is right.

Without integrity we are not responsible, respectful adults. Without integrity we cannot have good relationships or self-respect or respect.

Integrity is of the highest value. There is nothing true or whole without it.

Dignity, decency, self-respect, love and honour are all built on integrity.

If we do not behave with integrity, for whatever reason, politics, religion, prejudice, whatever it is, then we have failed to act rightly and we have wronged. It is not always easy to act with integrity, but when it is most difficult it is most important.


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Ethnicity

Ethnicity is one of the most difficult subjects to discuss objectively in our system. It is sometimes equated with race, and the prejudice and discrimination that often accompanies discussion of race, can also taint discussion of ethnicity. Maybe this is why ethnicity, and the right to reside in one’s homeland, is not a human right in the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, while the right to a nationality, and not be deprived of that nationality, is.

But race and ethnicity are not the same thing, and ethnicity is one of the strongest links in extended human communities. It is a source of personal identity with a culture, a people and a land.

While the borders to most countries are closed (or heavily restricted) to most other countries, granting citizenship to those not of the ethnicity traditionally associated with a land should be done rarely, and all people should have citizenship to the land with which their ethnicity is historically associated (their ancestral homeland). This right should never be denied or people’s sense of who they are and where they are from is harmed.

People should be able to live with confidence that their right to live in their ancestral homeland is respected. Respecting this right enables the opening of borders to trade and tourism, to working visas and to indefinite residence of citizens from other ethnicities, without endangering the ancestral rights of native peoples.

The European Union’s experiment with open borders across the EU member countries, relies on comparatively equal economies and on the principle of citizenship based on ethnicity to give a strong sense of secure identity so that indefinite residence by any EU resident in any EU member country is a matter of choice.

Closed borders lead to denials of ethnicity and homeland. There is no right to ethnicity in the Declaration of Human Rights, and so there is less protection from nation states denying ethnic rights, most pointedly the right to residence in countries of ancestral origin.

The right to residence in a homeland should be protected no matter where people are born or what the residential choices of their recent forebears were.

The permanent right to residence in their homeland gives security to all people residing outside their homelands. Such security is critical when those not indigenous to their country of residence are discriminated against or rejected by the indigenous population. Then they must have recourse to return to their countries of ethnic origin.

It is hard to see how, at any point, people could or should be excluded from their rights to residency in their ethnic homeland while they still identify with that ethnicity.

Rootless people may not know their heritage or ancestry. Offspring can be lost, unaware of where, how and why their culture has arisen, their ways and understandings disconnected from place and history. It is important for people to know their roots. They should be recorded, preserved and respected.


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Borders

While the prevailing purpose is the pursuit of power and money with harm, those in poorer nations will desire to enter richer nations, and those persecuted in dictatorships will desire to enter democratic nations.

When fulfilment without harm is integral to all nations' systems, everyone will be able to reside securely and safely in their home nations.

Open borders enable people to choose where they live. However, global open borders are not practical until all nations structure their systems for fulfilment without harm.

Security is a factor that prevents migration when those who seek to enter are in pursuit of power or money with harm.

When the freedom to live without harm is oppressed by violence and discrimination some people will try to flee. Borders should be open to those that understand and choose fulfilment without harm.


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Security

Where limits on fulfilment are necessary, they must be shared equally, that is, the limits must be on all people the same, consented to, and abided with through self-restraint.

People all have an equal right to protect themselves, to reject harm. When another has a weapon, often the only real protection is another weapon.

Weapons are a protection against others with weapons. They will only become irrelevant when no-one needs them, but this will only happen when the opportunity for growth is shared so everyone can grow.

Threats only increase the incentive to develop weapons, until the threats prove empty.

It may be too late for developed nations to gain sufficient trust from nations that have been marginalised to halt development of nuclear weaponry. If anything, it is a race for less-developed nations to develop these weapons so they can ensure they are no longer marginalised.

The West (and the rest of the world) can improve relations with marginalised nations, help them grow economically and socially, include them in the society of nations, and build trust founded on trust. This can be done with support and assistance, with sharing and inclusion, but not with threats and sanctions.

Marginalised nations will not trust developed nations when they are not trusted. If nations marginalised by the West wish to develop weaponry the West will not stop them by threats. If these nations attempt to use them, the West will respond (as every nation has a right to), but the West must trust these nations to behave responsibly (as the West believes it does) or they never will.

It is true that the impoverished, desperate nations the West has isolated for ideological reasons are a threat to the West’s wealth and security. But the West has no greater right to wealth and security than other nations. It would be best if the West shared wealth and security (and built trust) now, before marginalised nations develop the weapons they need to equalise their security.

Only an equalising of power will enable a more democratic, equal and effective council of nations. Shared weapons technology enables this equalisation.

Shared technology works to equalise security, economy, health, education, and opportunity. In the short term, arms will not be reduced, but they may become irrelevant.

Some countries will not feel able to trust others until they have the weaponry to guarantee they are not duped. When they have these and they trust, then the weapons may become redundant. If the US does not trust North Korea with weapons, how can North Korea trust the US with weapons?

The development of any weapon or defence that weakens the supremacy of the formerly ultimate weapon will lead to a new arms race if that technology is not shared. Until technology is shared, there will not be trust, and without trust there will continue to be arms races.

Any and all force must be used with regret and maximum restraint to minimise harm. Any use of force that is disproportionate to the harm it is in response to, must be followed by amends for it.

Obama, by seeking to remove America as the grand enemy of non-Western nations, diverts the attention of nations onto their own regimes. Without an enemy these regimes cannot divert attention from the harm they do their own people and self-destruct.

There is, however, every right to intervene and not share with nations infected or afflicted by exclusive groups aligned to philosophies of harm. Harm must be rejected as forcefully as required to halt it.


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Our System

Fulfilment is for all, with no restriction on what form that fulfilment takes, other than it be realised without harm.

Success is measured by the extent to which people’s products reflect their contributions and themselves. These contributions provide their fulfilment.

The best contributions would never have eventuated from people pursuing primarily money or popularity. If popularity and money eventuate they are the secondary by-products of the successful contributions made in pursuing fulfilment.

Following primarily money or popularity is less likely to realise fulfilment, and more likely to lead people to act in ways that suppress it, with resultant unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

To remove the primacy of money bring in the security of a shared base income. Money allows wealth to be accumulated and shared. If sharing is permanent and reliable then people do not have to try and accumulate massive fortunes to guarantee them and their families’ security.

Once there is a shared base income, people’s focus can safely be on making their best contributions according to who they are: putting their minds to work on how to produce the food needed, the power used, the appliances, machines, stories, and so on.

Organisations need to adapt to people, facilitating the realisation of their potential, not force people to adapt to them or lose their income and means of survival.

Organisations are a means for allowing people to realise potential contributing to products that help others realise potential.

Needing to work primarily for money rather than fulfilment leads people to take work in inflexible roles that do not reflect their differences and do not fulfil their potential. The consequence is dissatisfied workers and low productivity.

To communicate the need for more engineers or other roles, advertise that more are needed and publicise what is involved and show how interesting and fulfilling the work is. These methods are more effective than financial incentives.

When incomes are more evenly distributed, the supply of labour rises for work that is challenging and fulfilling. Work will only be that way when people have the autonomy and flexibility to shape it and complete it their way.

The work that needs doing is work that assists in the fulfilment of human potential without harming others fulfilment. Society and organisations should reflect this common purpose in their particular purposes. Particular purposes - be it building roads, servicing cars, or producing computers - should be work towards the common purpose. Fulfilment without harm should be reflected in the work of the organisation and the way people treat each other.

How do people decide what needs doing? They ask themselves what they can do with their unique skills and abilities to realise their potential and help enable the realisation of potential for everyone.

Competition will be to make the best contribution. People want to be the best at what they do, and when pursuing fulfilment without harm they do it by doing better, not by harming others.

There will be markets and money to distribute resources, because people will still have limited incomes and will still choose what to buy. The inevitable result of this is income inequalities (as some contributions will be more popular than others) but in this system, where people are confident and secure in their base incomes and their fulfilment, these excesses can be shared.

In this system, organisations become voluntary participations in which people choose to work together to realise their potential in fulfilling the potential of everyone.

Any structure that arises, develops organically to best facilitate the contributions of people working together to best meet the needs for whatever that particular organisation does.

It may have what resembles a hierarchical structure, but it is not a structure of control, it is a structure of organisation, with groups forming according to the size of demand for their services and the size of groups depending on the numbers that work best together using the communication tools most appropriate to meet the need.

Both capitalism and communism rely on control – one control of production by ownership for profit and increasing financial returns, the other control of production and distribution by central planning. Neither of these systems realise potential well, and the extent to which capitalism is better is closely related to the extent there is less control of production (by massively wealthy owners) and greater distribution of wealth.

For growth to be for everyone, ownership and wealth must be shared. Then the assessment of need, and the meeting of that need, is by everyone in their own way. This will result in greatest growth and stop the waste of so much unrealised potential.

In this system, planning is decentralised and distributed, devolved to all in the system, away from the centrally planned and controlled government, public, socialist, communist organisations, and away from the centrally planned and controlled private, capitalist, owned organisations.

Greater freedom to produce in diverse areas, through a shared base income, will significantly raise overall production and realisation of potential, as well as increase the likelihood of financially successful products occurring, with accompanying larger incomes being available for sharing.

Just as important to fulfilment is the right to ideas. These are an unlimited resource that can be shared for shared growth or held exclusive depending on whether the motivation is fulfilment through best contribution or financial reward.

Resources, produce and growth will be most widely shared when ideas are used to convert limited resources into unlimited product, rather than exploited to convert limited, coveted resources into limited, coveted product.

By retaining the right to share ideas people can be empowered to implement them with the aim of growing shared fulfilment. Using ideas to produce unlimited products, with unlimited variety, from limited resources will eliminate need. Get there by changing the motivation and measure from money to life.


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Enlightenment

Surfing everyday may be seen as doing nothing by some, but that level of commitment is what those that have potential in something need to give to realise it as much as they can.

It may not be apparent in financial terms how commitment will pay, especially when it is sport or art. But it does, it realises potential, it makes a contribution, the contribution people are best suited for and best able to make at the time they are doing it.

Human potential is greater than economic markets and financial calculations. People can see a need or a way of doing things that realises their potential without foreseeable financial return. How much is Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest worth? Van Gogh’s paintings? Einstein’s theory of relativity? There were no estimates of financial worth or guarantees of monetary success when these endeavours were pursued, but to be fulfilled they did them anyway.

People all have the right to realise their potential. In a society manifest by a purpose of fulfilment and no harm, that right is sacred. Money, which enables the accumulation of wealth and wealth disparities, enables the sharing of wealth so all people can realise their potential.

Where rights are guaranteed, and fulfilment without harm is understood, efficiency is greatest. All things are done in time and at ease. Diversity and productivity are at their highest. Contributions can be hard and require great effort, but they are also easy because they realise potential and are done the right way, at the right time, in the right place.

This is the world of enlightenment in which the purpose and principle are understood by all. In this world, fulfilment without harm leads to knowledge and guardianship, where people operate harmoniously with nature’s forces and resources, rather than as masters seeking to exploit it.

The increasing interconnectedness of people sharing personal information creates opportunity for fulfilment without harm to prevail by showing people they are fundamentally similar, with fulfilment a common purpose achievable by not harming the fulfilment of each other. However, this interconnectedness and trust also creates a risk that those ignorant of purpose and principle, pursuing power or money, will abuse trust and cause harm.

Pursuing power or money with harm leads to catastrophe. In this pursuit people do wrong because they feel it is right. They are taken in by the flawed ethos of power and money which underlies much of human history. On this path everyone is for themselves, whatever the cost to others.

It is common to think it right for people to try and control others, particularly in organisations. Society is still structured for control-type relationships, reflecting pasts when control was even greater. But now is the time to realise a new way and a new system, to gain understanding and live with the shared purpose of fulfilment without harm.


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Natural Selection

Natural selection is a title for the description of biological change that occurs without human intervention, as observed and described by Charles Darwin. Biological selection by humans can occur, breeding for certain attributes in dogs or horses for instance, but that selection is not natural. Natural selection is a process that occurs in nature without deliberate human-directed intervention.

As it is not guided by humans, natural selection has no human morality. It does not care and is not fair in the sense of preferring good over bad. It just is. The principle of no harm does not directly apply, as that is a human principle for people, one we have learned, not a principle of nature.

Natural selection is a process by which life adapts to and grows in its environment. For life to survive and grow, it needs to fill as many environments as it can. To do this, it diversifies. Diversification is critical to life’s growth and survival. With diversity, if one environment collapses, life can still flourish in another. The more diverse life is, the more resilient it is to change in its environment.

Because environments always change, life is always changing, always adapting to grow in changing environments.

Every organism, every plant, and every animal is part of the whole that is life, including humans.

The parts (individual organisms and whole species) specialise to different environments and different cultures. Humans are an expression of the whole, one part of life. As environments change some parts (some individual organisms, some entire species) fall away, and some thrive. This is natural selection through survival in a changing environment.

Because we are all an expression of life, we can all feel at one with all life. If we have a spiritual need for being part of something bigger, then we can take solace and comfort in feeling part of the whole of life, because we all are - plants, animals, humans, and all living organisms.

As mentioned, natural selection is a title for the description of what occurs to life as it grows and adapts to its changing environment. The term species, on the other hand, is a label for the artificial construct of grouping different forms of life together according to whether they are capable of reproducing (fertile) offspring together. Life is not designed to fit neatly into categories though, and some groups called species are likely just varieties, while some groups thought just varieties are likely species. It can be hard to tell, and the definition is only a convenience for ordering to a human-defined classification.

The point at which a variety becomes a species (unable to reproduce fertile offspring) is also problematic to determine, and would not happen to all members of each variety of a genus over night. Rather it is a process that happens incrementally over a great deal of time. And over that time there will be a diminishing chance that some members of related varieties/species could still produce fertile offspring. It is usually a very gradual process, and not particularly significant given that speciation would usually only occur in varieties that would not attempt to mate anyway. Speciation is only an indeterminate point on a vast spectrum of differences between organisms.

We humans have adapted to our environments, and to individual community cultures (which also adapt), like other organisms have. However, we have also developed technology that has extended our capacity to live in very diverse environments, even in space.

The slow pace of natural selection makes it near impossible to predict how life and particular organisms will develop in the future. This is even more so for humans, as we have so much control over our environment. However, radical environmental change, such as from global catastrophe, whether man made or natural, can speed up the process of natural selection according to what survives these catastrophes. This, though, is even more unpredictable than gradual change, as we do not know what form the next catastrophe will take.

Perhaps we can say that there does appear to be a natural emphasis in humans for greater intelligence, as this is the source of our invention of technology, and our technology, formed through our understanding of the world, facilitated by our intelligence, is what has made humans so successful on Earth. So natural selection for higher intelligence in humans, by whatever the biological process is, seems likely. Results on IQ tests which have been around for many years indicate that average human intelligence is increasing by about three IQ points per decade in the United States, a pattern likely followed, more or less, in other places.

The process of natural selection, must be a result of selection by individuals for each other. The results of this en masse are that some traits become more prominent. Any degree of isolation in a community will result in particular traits and cultural practices different from the traits and practices of other communities elsewhere.

The selection by individuals of each other is felt and cemented by love. Love compels us to care and protect those we love. It is a bond that has evolved to ensure we stay and protect those we have selected for our partners and our offspring. It is an attachment we form when we meet the person we feel is right for us, whom we fall in love with. We see in that person traits we find desirable, perhaps because they are similar or complementary to our own or because the community or sub-community we are in values them highly. Just as our children have traits similar to ourselves due to their biological inheritance of half our DNA, so also our partners are likely to have similar or complementary DNA to ours because this is desirable to us.

The results of natural selection, of love and preferences for partners on a community wide scale, result in certain traits becoming more prominent. This is happening all the time, the evidence of prominent traits in different communities can easily be seen in the national traits of different nationalities.

Culture accelerates natural selection, as what is valued in the culture also influences what is selected (valued) by individuals in that culture.

Language is a good metaphor for the diversity that occurs in isolated communities, and even today, with all the conveniences of modern travel, still occurs: witness the development of different accents. However, there is also commonality and convergence on the lingua franca of English, and the largely American cultural influences which followed and helped promote it.

The importance of culture in natural selection brings us back to the principle of no harm and the purpose of fulfilment. In cultures where this purpose and principle predominate natural selection will naturally select for individuals that demonstrate them.

Culture and natural selection are self-reinforcing. Culture, and technology (an outcome of modern human culture), adapts first, but natural selection follows.

If pursuing fulfilment without harm is the most successful strategy for human communities, and I believe it will be if people (the thinking species) choose it, then natural selection will reinforce it. What will be the outcome of that? Presumably people who are still better at fulfilling their fulfilment in harmony with other people. If that fulfilment requires greater intelligence, creativity and innovation, then we are likely to get more of that.


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Make Change

By recognising the purpose of fulfilment without harm people can determine that right and wrong are so from reason rather than morals or religions.

The wrong way, and the systems and behaviours that lead from it, are wrong because they ignore the purpose and contravene the principle of no harm; just as the right way, and the systems and behaviours that lead from it, are right because they emphasise the purpose of fulfilment and abide by the principle of no harm.

Fiddling with financial systems, political forms and economic models will make no great difference to a positive future unless the fundamentals are understood and in place, as these are the basis upon which people should view and reference change.

This is a shift in understanding, a change in mind-set, an ideal for all people with no exclusivity. This is a better story in which to frame lives. Society is evolving, The Common Purpose helps give a framework to that.

The idea of fulfilment without harm cannot prevail solely through the influence of the media to inform opinion, it must be a movement influencing opinion to win the mandate to transform social systems into ones based on fulfilment without harm.

The rebel organisation, or community for change, is a power-decentralised organisation, a common purpose organisation with a centralised, open communication system, invoking people to expose and challenge the pursuit of power and money. It uses the shifting systems of the web, like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and interlinked websites generally to organically organise and deploy. Its members are ad hoc. They may be fleeting and transitory or stick around. There are no contracts, no controls. Just a common purpose and principle.

Small changes multiply. Any amount of change, to any part, adds to total change. Just as harm leads to damage on every scale from local to global and accumulates in total harm, so does any amount of fulfilment add to total fulfilment.

Change needs to happen everywhere at all levels, but ultimately it is just us, each of us, deciding to realise our potential without harm to others. So, insist on flexibility and tolerance, take a stand, do what expresses, not what is expected. Organisations should adapt to people, not control people.

In general, people are the same (all human); in particular, all different. It is the differences that makes individuals special, unique and individual. If people give up, surrender or derogate their fulfilment, they submit to the forces that denigrate their individual expression and live lives unfulfilled and unexpressed. The world loses their product and their potential, and they lose themselves.

The struggle will take many forms before rights become accepted norms. The most necessary element of it is communication – voicing rights and insisting on them – until enough are aware that such rights are right and should be adopted not just as an ideal, but as a practical reference for all to understand and agree with.

Many governments have signed on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but none have brought the principles fully into play. Although some political leaders make overtures, it will not be until people insist on their rights that they will be instituted in the system.

People have to make change according to the situation they find themselves in. They need to reject harm as well as not harm. Harm is wrong for everyone, and this includes the harm of trying to control others.

People need to work to produce their best contributions and realise their potential in furthering fulfilment for everyone. This is what our system should enable.

Refuse to recognise authority that harms, even if protesting means being harmed. Doing otherwise permits harm. Without recognition of the basic right of all people to fulfilment without harm conflict, is inevitable.

Employment contracts must be fair, as between equals, working to a common organisational purpose in line with the common purpose of fulfilment and abiding by the principle of no harm. Time at work, and at place of work, must be flexible. People must be free to work in the way natural to themselves without harm from others. Look at employment contracts and codes of conduct, and change them to reject the confiscation of ideas, to reject rigidity in work time and place, and to reject enforced compliance with commands.

To assess whether a situation is right or wrong come back to the principle – fulfilment without harm. If the situation causes harm it is wrong and needs to be rectified.

Align everything to fulfilment, close speculation out of markets, divert financial incentive, but not financial signals, and replace them with the incentive of fulfilment by contribution.

Respect calls for a strength that is integral and contained, that does not infringe on others rights, but still protects one’s own.

People will do what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, when it needs to be done, where it needs to be done. They will do it because they are clear on their purpose and principle.

If the world is not fair, make it fairer. Unfairness is a challenge, not an excuse.

An authoritarian protest is violent. A democratic protest is peaceful. An authoritarian protest succeeds by violently destroying the opposition. A democratic protest succeeds by expressing the voice of the majority, by pure force of numbers. It succeeds through the strength of its potential.


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Find Our Niche

People all have a particular niche, whether it is a position in a sports team using a particular sidestep or a painter using a particular style.

Competition occurs in closely related niches, not between distant niches. It occurs when people compete with different strengths, between painters with different styles, between physicists with different ideas, between toymakers with different toys. Competition occurs between people in similar fields trying to make their best contributions.

It is when niches are most closely matched that competition is most intense, when rivalry may lead to patch protection and harm. This is why peer review is not always the best indicator of excellence. The closer ones work is to another’s, the more likely the other's is to be seen as a threat, particularly when it contradicts or breaks new ground. In these circumstances, new works are refused publication in journals, students are refused entry to subjects, staff are denied assignments, products are denied entry to markets, and ideas are snubbed by those who should be mentors.

If people have opponents to their advancement they are most likely those already established in the same field, in a similar niche. The already established are in a position to resist advances through discouraging ideas, deflecting applications and rubbishing claims as they defend their own place in the field.

Fortunately, the real interest and market for people’s product, for their work, is outside of their niche, in the communities of people who are interested in it, but do not participate in it – the people who like sport, science, art, toys, and so on. They, not those in the niche, are the key to popular success.

The difficulty is breaking through the system to realise your potential – to learn, produce, communicate and distribute from your niche. Open information technologies are essential to this.

Open information technologies, in particular the internet and digitised data, allow people to access knowledge for learning autonomously and to publicise and distribute their work to their audience (largely) without going through the autocratic system of organisations and institutions that censure and restrict access.

Unfortunately, the internet is vulnerable to restrictive controls, and autocratic organisations and institutions remain pervasive obstacles to communication and advancement. A controller can stand in the way without approval from the community or the wider organisation, because their position is not elected but appointed, and their decisions are not by consent but by decree. The situation is ripe for abuse.

It does not have to be like this. Those exploiting similar niches have to compete by trying to do better than others, but they do not have to harm in the process. Unfortunately the temptation to win by harming (generally by closing out opportunities for others) is too strong for those who do not understand that fulfilment without harm is for everyone. Their actions are facilitated by the non-democratic forms of organisation and decision-making that persist in society and are still legislated for in legal systems. These need to change.

To make change, it is essential to future fulfilment that people persist in realising their potential without harm, rejecting control. Eventually the product of their potential will make the breakthrough to their audience. They will be fulfilled when they fill their niche and realise their unique potential, their unique purpose in life, and if they do it without harm, then they will also have enabled the fulfilment of others potential.

Difference is desirable. Difference is what makes people interesting and unique. Difference is what makes people competitive. When every shop on the street is a bookstore it is each individual bookstore’s differences that makes it stand out.

Human selection is based on similarity, but sexual reproduction is not the only way to ensure survival of similar genes. Selection for favour, friendship, sharing, and mentoring are far more effective and efficient at preserving like traits in like persons than straight physical reproduction. The most effective enabler of these is the realisation of potential.

When people express their potential, and the contribution from doing so is lauded, then the effect of that popularity on the whole population’s selection for traits and persons alike to the contributors is far greater than their own reproductive capacity.

Competition to contribute is in ways that express and fulfil who people are.


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The Transition

Society, economy and organisation are complex. Precisely what a conscious common purpose morphs our systems into is speculative.

To make progress towards common fulfilment, people need to question the current system and hold the purpose in mind. This book is part of that process.

The Common Purpose is intended as a stake in the ground to mark how far systems have come and to ensure they do not digress. It is also a statement of shared direction with ideas on the path forward. But it is not definitive. The details cannot all be worked out here.

The decisions on how opportunity and income is shared, so opportunity to contribute and find fulfilment is also shared, must be developed from the input of all people via the information systems constructed. More than likely these will not be fixed decisions, but transforming and transformative ones modified as society adapts and modifies. The ideas in The Common Purpose are transformational ones, not final ones; they are not the end of change.

Similarly, the common purpose of fulfilment is also individual purpose and can never be predicted precisely in specifics, as it is realised uniquely in every individual.


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